


Transpose

by Nadler



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Bodyswap, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:57:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21613786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nadler/pseuds/Nadler
Summary: Absolutely, Sasha can fake it for a little while. He knows his friend far better than anyone else on the Stars. He's never been a particularly enigmatic goalie, and when in doubt, act a little like a cat that's trying to be helpful. The team thinking Anton does a passable impression of Sasha, though?That hurts. He's one of a kind.
Relationships: Anton Khudobin/Alexander Radulov
Comments: 4
Kudos: 70
Collections: Hockey Holidays 2019





	Transpose

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silkstocking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkstocking/gifts).

Sasha wakes up in Anton's apartment. This is not new, so he does not worry about it. Anton's Dallas apartment is not a scary place. The Siberan cabin is much more dangerous to Sasha's health. He doesn't remember how he ended up there, but that's also not new. It's not a big deal. He scratches the back of his neck and wonders what did he do to get a crick in it. 

When he goes to rinse out his mouth with mouthwash, Sasha sees Anton's face in the mirror. He scrunches an itch on Anton's nose, and he brushes his teeth. 

Anton, thankfully, is in his apartment. In the wrong body, but still. 

"You fell asleep on my couch," Anton tells him, and it answers the least of many questions. 

Sasha wonders why he's so calm, but at the same time, Sasha knows that Anton isn't going to do anything dumber in Sasha's body than his own. And he can't snap his fingers and change them back, could he? Sasha asks, only to get a shake of Anton-in-Sasha's head.

"It'll wear off." Anton scratches his--Sasha's--stubble. He doesn't explain any further, but he's pretty sure-sounding, so Sasha will give it to him. "And I'm shaving this." 

"You won't," and then, a moment passes. Sasha likes that beard. "Fuck, we have games." 

"What, you think I can't fool them?" Anton puts on an impression of Sasha's expression. With Sasha's face. This will never work, so Sasha starts preparing for whatever idea they need to do to get back. It's supposed to wear off soon, and Anton's pretty sure it's going to be done by the end of the week if they don't tell anyone. They'll have to get through this without embarrassing themselves. 

"Well, work on your acting skills. You'll have to fake being sick."

It both is and isn't weird being inside Anton's body, and somehow even more literally than that usually sounds. Sasha's seen all of it, and he's not having any epiphanies over getting to touch Anton's dick in a very boring context. Thankfully, Anton gets away with taking a couple of maintenance days, and Sasha nods at Reese and Bish giving him tape to watch and goalie exercises Sasha doesn't quite understand. 

No one notices. What the actual fuck. 

Anton's body is familiar to Sasha. He's known him for many, many years, and they were roommates fooling around as teenagers, and they are comfortable friends now. it's weird to see Anton pulling the faces in the mirror Sasha tries out, just to see, and it absolutely sucks to feel another man's aches and pains. Sasha was used to his shouder and the weird strain in the ankle that didn't need the trainers looking at; they didn't hurt anymore, but Sasha had to be ginger with Anton's elbow and his hip in a way that he didn't know about before, and they were not talking about it in the way they were hockey players who understood each other and how they were Anton and Sasha who understood each other. 

Absolutely, Sasha can fake it for a little while. He knows his friend far better than anyone else on the Stars. He's never been a particularly enigmatic goalie, and when in doubt, act a little like a cat that's trying to be helpful. 

The team thinking Anton does a passable impression of Sasha, though? That hurts. He's one of a kind. 

Jamie nods at them coming in together, and Sasha knows all of Anton's routines, so it's not hard to follow them. It's weirdly comforting, to know that the goalie things that he does still are inscrutable, but they help center the nerves about being caught out. Anyway, he doesn't have many practice routines. The worry can wait until the game, which Sasha solidly pushes out of his mind now. 

Anton brushes off a comment about Sasha's _freshly shaved_ face with a look and innuendo about beard burn, which gets him some whistles. Was it really that easy? 

Sasha sees Tyler asks Anton a question, and he ends up giving Tyler a noogie instead of answering a skater's question. Sasha frowns. Everyone's laughing, though, and when Anton goes over and helps Sasha with putting on goalie gear, no one bats an eye. At least he didn't have to ask. 

"Pretty sure you can do this yourself," Anton says, putting their heads together. "You do it often enough." 

"How can you walk? I feel ridiculous." Sasha does, but at the same time, he thinks he looks absolutely ridiculous doing this. He props up his foot and motions for Anton to tie his skate. Anton rolls his eyes, but he does it, and Sasha's never had trouble tying Anton's skates, either. "Act like you've helped before." 

"You look ridiculous? I had to dress like you today." There's a more than a little mischief and open fondness in that sentence, so Sasha can't really keep the scowl on his face for more than two seconds. 

Goalie skates are ridiculous. Sasha just breathes and lets the muscle memory take over. Reese and Bish lead Sasha through stretches, and he can't tell if the strain in his muscles is normal or if he's doing them wrong. He keeps a smile, though, and pretends he cares about the stretches. 

Practice goes okay, and Sasha only has to shake his head and his arms out and say, "Feeling a little weird. The weather," and the weather has been absurd, so Reeser only nods. Still, it's been difficult not answering to his own name.

"You can't play." Anton unceremoniously tells Sasha, bullying his way into the stall after practice is over. The goalie stalls are a little bigger, and they already know it's already big enough for both of them, if they share. He's warm against Sasha's side, and Sasha barely remembers to grumble in complaint. If nothing else, Anton's presence is a little bit of an anchor. 

Denis is out of earshot, so sticking to Russian is the best bet. The rest of the team barely catches names and swears, and nothing is out of the ordinary. 

"What are you talking about?" Sasha doesn't mean to be snappish. Sasha is a great hockey player. He can play. He could do anything he wants to. 

Anton frowns. "It's okay. Bish is starting, anyway. But maybe, if you don't think very hard, the muscle memory will do it all. Shouldn't be hard for you."

Sasha jabs him with an elbow. "Then stop overthinking shots, too." 

"You'll see when I try them," and Sasha can't tell if Anton is serious or not. 

He might get scratched for this.

Denis doesn't follow after Sasha like Valeri did. He has guys from the Texas Stars to fall back on. But, if anyone was going to notice there was something up, it was going to be him. 

They take him shopping, sometimes, mostly because if they're going to be seen with him, he shouldn't embarrass them going out. Anton looks supremely unimpressed at that reasoning, every single time, and Sasha waves him off. It's a way to kill an afternoon. It's not like going shopping with Seggy, either, where he wants a range of opinions. They could reschedule, but that would involve giving some sort of reason, and honestly, Denis just wants to be told he bought some cool things. Both of them can equally tell him if his pants look ridiculous. 

"Are you and Sasha having a fight?" Denis asks, when Anton's abandoned them to get a pretzel from the food court. "Did you throw away some of his hats?" 

Sasha shrugs. "No and no. You know what he's like." 

It's another blow to his ego when Denis just nods. Sasha is never afraid to feel big, to pour it all out there, but he's not petty for senseless reasons. 

Anton comes back with three pretzels, and he takes a bite out of one before handing it to Sasha. 

Two days in, and Sasha's just _restless_. He paces across Anton's carpet. His life feels a little on hold because he has to slip on his Dobby mask, and he wants to feel his own aches and pains again. There will be a tipping point; they don't have all the same friends, and they may have swapped phones without much incident, there are some things that are just private, even between them. Right now, though, it's just a waiting game.

"When do you think?" 

In all his extremely suspect goalie knowledge, Anton just shrugs. "Soon. I think. You remember that one guy in--" 

Sasha does. "So we wait. We don't have to do something crazy like jump off a cliff or magic, do we?" 

"No rituals." 

"Not even the fun kind?" Sasha is half-joking, but he also raises an eyebrow. Anton snorts. "What, like you've never wanted to suck your own dick?" 

"No, but you're a narcissist." Anton says, flippantly, and then he looks thoughtful. "Maybe when I was twenty, I could do that. My joints aren't that flexible anymore." 

That is absolutely new information to Sasha, and for a brief moment, he thinks about the boy he knew trying that, and then he thinks about Anton as he is now trying that and probably pulling something in his back, and he laughs. Sasha's not up for trying that in Anton's body, either.

They have a game that night, so Sasha checks his phone and says, "Nap time?" 

Anton yawns, on cue.

Hockey players love naps. Napping together is not a usual thing, but Anton is as huggy as ever, and they're already fucking up each other's routines for the most part. There is a tiny part of Sasha that thinks he'll just wake up normal, and this would be a dream, but the larger part of him takes several deep breaths and lets himself sleep. 

They're still the same after a nap, but the world is a little clearer. Maybe that's just the weather changing again. Dallas has weird weather. 

Sasha is antsy, and he feels like his skin is too tight. He fidgets, and Anton grumbles from beside him, face mashed into the pillow. The best way to deal with this is to complain. 

Anton laughs in a shoulder-shaking way, and there is no way Sasha's laugh sounds like that for real, does it? "You're wound up. It happens. Go jerk off."

"That's part of your game day?" Sasha never put thought into whether Anton was one of those 'save it for after' kind of guys. 

"Only sometimes."

"So take care of it," Sasha says. He doesn't even bring up sucking his own dick again. 

"I can't even say that's the worst way you've asked me for a handjob." Anton laughs into his shoulder. 

"You can't tell me it doesn't work."

Anton does, and Sasha doesn't know if it's because he asked so nicely or if it being part of his routine helps set Anton mentally, even if he was in a different body, but it's novel, at least, to see his own hand work over Anton's dick, to be on this side of the equation--_really_ knowing what it feels like on his end. Something is undone when he finishes half on Anton's boxers, the barest feeling of stubble on his (Anton's) shoulder.

Sasha drives them to the rink, and everyone is too engrossed in their own warmup to really notice when he joins the pick-up soccer warmup. It's weird, excrutiatingly so to put on the gear, but all he has to do is not forget how to open the door.

"Also, help pick up gear if someone drops it," Anton reminded him in the car. "And if Bish asks you for anything, just say it's not his fault. I think you can sit in the tunnel if you want." 

"You don't do that much," he said, but he takes the out. There's a stool. He's been scratched in his life, so he's seen what a game looks like. He's been benched, too. It shouldn't be that hard. Anton focuses on the game and watches it from his seat, and he doesn't get bothered much.

It's a messy game. There's guys everywhere, and no one mixes it up with Anton, which is a little bit of a relief, since most goalies can't fight worth a damn. Anton could probably hold his own off the ice, but Sasha's never needed to test that. Anton doesn't skate like Sasha does, and he doesn't quite get up to Sasha's top speed, but his vision is as good as ever, and he makes deliberate passes, crisp and clear onto his linemates' tape. Klinger takes the pass but then loses it on a drop pass, and Anton bullies his way into the neutral zone. It's not bad for someone who hasn't played out for a long, long while. 

During a stoppage, Anton skates over and leans against the boards right next to Sasha. "How's the view?"

"Best seat in the house," Sasha says, and Anton smiles at that. He then adds, "You need better backcheck."

"Who are you, coach?" Anton asks. He sighs. "Okay, hit me with it."

Sasha tells him, and there's only so much time before the linesmen call them back to the dot. "I'll shut up when you score a goal," he promises.

Anton comes back to Sasha when they call a time-out, and since he hasn't scored that goal, Sasha takes the time to keep talking at him and then he says, "You might want to go listen to Coach." 

"No, it's PK. You're shit at it. That's why you don't do it."

They kill off the penalty without him, so.

Also Anton fucking scores that goal, a tap in off of Miro's rebound, and that really is an impressive impression when he celebrates. He might have been practicing. Sasha shakes his head. 

When the final buzzer rings, he's out there and claps his hands for the crowd. He finds Anton to congratulate on his first goal, and he starts forming the words when he claps Anton on the shoulder--

That's it. The lights are different, brighter? Maybe he needs his eyes checked after having goalie eyes. Sasha leans onto Anton's shoulder to make sure they both don't go down because he's suddenly lost an edge. That would be an embarrassing way to cap off a win. Anton says, "You owe me for that, huh?" when they're heading down the tunnel, and maybe Sasha does. 

After the win, Sasha can feel the adrenaline in his veins and the soreness in his muscles, even if he didn't play. He can't even complain when he swaps out The team goes out for a drink or two but nothing big. They're at home. The past few days seem unreal, and no one mentions anything out of the usual that he'd have to kill Anton for even when drunk, so Sasha thinks they're doing alright on the fooling everyone front. Everyone disperses into their own little groups, the way it is at home: the old married men go home, the young married men stay out a little later, the kids group together, and Sasha and Anton are left to themselves.

"What do I owe you?" he asks. "Aside from another drink." 

Their fingers brush when they toast. 

"Dinner," Anton says, and Sasha knows his face very well. He also looks excited, pumped up from scoring an NHL goal. "And a good goal celebration." 

Sasha can do that. He was planning on it anyway. This was special, and Sasha's always been good at celebrating other people's goals better than his own. 

He grins.


End file.
